A Time to Kill by John Grisham - Essay Example

A Letter to a Friend about A Time to Kill by John Grisham Dear Phoebe, I just finished reading a good book by John Grisham. I don't know if you have heard of this writer, but to me, he is one of the best around, for law thrillers. Grisham was a lawyer and decided he didn't like it anymore, so he quit. Now he writes novels. A Time to Kill is his first novel, written in 1989. It is a very good story although the subject matter is not easy to read. Grisham knows how the South works because he worked in a law firm in Mississippi for over 10 years, so many of his novels take place in the South.

This novel is sad and makes you think at the same time. The book starts with the rape of a 10 year old black girl by two drunk, 20 year old "rednecks"; the setting is Clanton, Mississippi. The men have no problem with raping this little girl because she is "a nigger" in their eyes. In fact, they beat her when she fights them and they plan to lynch her. However, a car comes up and scares them. Instead, they put her body into their pickup truck and find a ditch to throw her body in. They throw her away and don't think anything else about it.

The men go to court for trial, but the little girls' father, Carl Lee, shoots the men in the courthouse. He knows that they will never be put in jail because they are white and the little girl is black. You have to ask yourself, "What would I do in that situation?" I thought that I would probably do the same thing if something like that had happened to my little girl. The book takes off from there and we get to see the anger that trial and brings out in both the blacks and the whites. First off, Carl Lee gets a white attorney to defend him which is not a good thing for a white man to do in the South.

The white attorney is just out of law school and he is already struggling to pay his bills. He hears about Carl Lees case and takes it because he wants to help him. One of the things I like about this book is it keeps you on your toes; you never know what is going to happen next.